Saturday, 8 October 2005

Speaking of shills...

...which I was, here's a word to the wise...

Don't even think about posting comments to my blog from an IP address in the same /25 used by the company that you're promoting.

...unless you want to be accused of being a comment spammer.

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Friday, 7 October 2005

Is this is a 419 scam?

Yes, it is!

The weirdest message to hit my spamtraps in a long while. I suppose there must be an advance fee element involved somewhere, but it's certainly not the ordinary "this guy died and I need your help to liberate his money" scam.














best regards and hoping to hear from you soonest.

nancy doyles.

for best correspondence,reply this mail only to:,

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Thursday, 6 October 2005

CNN has no clue. I'm shocked.

Slow news day? CNN asks, Is it time for England to change its national flag?:

Sigh. Where to start?

  1. First and most obviously, the Cross Of St. George isn't the flag of Britain. It's the English flag (inasmuch as England could even be said to have a flag -- see next point.)
  2. England isn't a nation, so CNN's silly Quickvote just shows someone's ignorance. It would be like asking if California should change its national flag. Huh? The "nation" is the UK (or properly The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Our flag is the Union Flag (shown to the right), not the CoSG.
  3. There are some in England who misuse the CoSG as a racist symbol. These people have no concept of the Crusades and if you asked them what happened almost 1000 years ago would probably give you a funny look, smash the top of their pint glass, and mash the jagged edges into your face "for being clever."
Hat tip: Mailgeek. Thanks to

Rant of the day: Microsoft "invented" AJAX?

I am so sick of Microsoft shills popping up everywhere to mention, "we invented Ajax."

Shoulders of giants, people! Just about every innovation has been built on top of other people's work. Look at the IE7 beta for example: a blatant Firefox ripoff.

Outlook Web Access, even in its 2003 incarnation, is a very poor example of an Ajax app. The term means more than simply sending information in the background. OWA's interface design is still fundamentally page based, so the real-world performance is much slower than something like Scalix.

(See also: more about AJAX and how it differs from conventional web methods.)

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Wednesday, 5 October 2005

Use outbound spam filtering, as well as inbound

Inbound spam filtering is now commonplace. Outbound spam filtering isn't; but it should be.

If a PC in your organization gets infected with malware -- such as a remote-access Trojan -- it may become a spam zombie. This means that it will send spam under the remote control of a spammer. This can happen despite your best efforts with firewalls and anti-virus technology.

If the recipients of the spam track down the source of these spam messages, they won't reach the spammer -- they'll reach you. Your organization is therefore at risk of abuse complaints to your ISP or spam blacklisting, either of which can have serious consequences for your business operations. Outbound spam filtering can help prevent this from happening.

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Tuesday, 4 October 2005

INBOX'06 anyone?

I'm pleased to announce that The Golden Group, organizers of the INBOX conferences, have asked me to program their 2006 conference sessions. It's going to be a challenging task to slip into Martin Hall's shoes, but at least I have a similar funny accent.

Are you interested in being a part of the conference? Perhaps by speaking, moderating, or being on a panel? We're at the very early stages of planning, so there's no Call For Papers yet. If you're interested, drop me a line to the usual email address.

(INBOX'06 will be in early June, in San Jose, California. You can still find the previous year's conference web pages.)

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Monday, 3 October 2005

Why do spammers spam when they know we hate it so much?

Why indeed! For many users of email, spam is a constant source of frustration and annoyance ... Guess what? Spammers aren't sending all this email just because they enjoy annoying people. There's almost always a commercial motive. So, let's follow the money! ... What can we learn from this? Don't buy from businesses that spam — it only encourages them. [more]
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Sunday, 2 October 2005

Another anti-spam tool to avoid

Some company called hendrickson software components is touting a new spam filter called Em@ilCRX.

Guess what? It...

...uses an automated challenge response system, and reverse DNS validation to stop spam from making it into your email inbox.

Oh brother. All together now, say it with me:
  1. Challenge/response causes spam
  2. If you use it, you're a spammer
  3. If everyone used it, email wouldn't work!
This topic previously covered here and here.

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